Pop-up ads are out. The debate about the true effectiveness of a well placed banner rages tirelessly on. You know you’ve heard it being touted around the digital marketing sphere: Content marketing is the new black.

It seems what every future-leaning business is trying to emulate is the brand-turned-publisher approach of executing an advertising strategy. With this shift in mindset from traditional to native ads (advertorials, sponsored content, etc), it’s unsurprising that – just like subtle product placement in movies or on TV – strategically embedding links in relevant, engaging content is far more effective in adding value to the user experience over the blatant promotion of your product.

What I’m getting at is that a well thought out content marketing strategy put proactively to work can be a powerful relationship-building and brand positioning tool.

Remember: your end goal here should be building engagement and using that to boost your bottom line across your conversion funnel. Do not indulge in obvious self-promotion. Never resort to hard-selling tactics. Prioritize relationships over transactions. Quality and value are key; making the customer experience as fun, frictionless and interactive as possible are your primary objectives.

Turning Water Into Wine

Why are you trying to write content and what are you trying to achieve from it? The obvious first step in deciding what information to prioritize sharing with your audience is asking yourself the followng: Does it align with your brand narrative? Is it relevant to your product or service? Does it add value? Next, ask yourself, do you want to establish yourself or your business as a thought leader in your industry? Assume your audience is hearing what you have to say for the first time. Presenting information that is easily understood from a layman’s perspective is inherently easier to remember and instantly more share-worthy. It’s basic human nature to gravitate towards what’s easiest to remember and partake in what people tend to have similar or polarizing opinions about.

Putting It Out There: Effective Content Distribution

Once you have your content ready to go and a communication schedule or broader game plan in place, distribution is usually the next hurdle. Here, it’s important to remember to use social to re-enforce content, and not the other way around. Effective content distribution is a crucial factor in controlling how existing or new customers interact with your brand. Think: Halo Effect. You come to love and trust the brands you’re most familiar with. Similarly, when you really really like one aspect of a product, you tend to hold a positive predisposition towards everything else that it offers and derive more value in sharing it. And vice versa.

Re-Purpose Existing Content to Optimize Your ROI

Re-purposing existing, archived content that best resonated with your audience is an often overlooked way to boost customers’ engagement with your brand or product. And adding genuine value to the user experience is arguably at the core of truly effective content marketing – a positive user experience can go a long way in building or fuelling your brand presence without much out-of-pocket spend. Leverage this. Here’s a few ways how:

Hub-and-Spoke It – Tweet key takeaways from past articles that were of most interest to or saw the most engagement from your audience. Even going so far as asking for a re-tweet or share can bring surprising results. Ask questions. Reach out to influencers or otherwise recognized experts or authorities in their fields for new perspectives on past projects. Let their legions of followers or site visitors into your circle to add more fuel to your marketing fire.

Now that we’ve got you covered when it comes to Twitter Analytics, (see Shamyla’s posts: Twitalytics & Twitter’s Hidden Gem) lets have a look at Facebook Insights.

There’s a lot of metrics available to help you understand what’s going on with your Facebook page. But sometimes this can be a bit of information overload, especially if you don’t know what to make of it. You’ll find this blog is broken down into 5 subsections, corresponding directly to the tabs on your Facebook page’s Insights section: Overview, Likes, Reach, Visits, Posts and People. Our goal is to give you a little cheat sheet as to how to handle the information in each of these sections.

Overview

This is a 7 day summary including the present day. This doesn’t tell you much, but it’ll hint if your hard work paid off or if you’ll need to rethink your whole approach. If graphs are going up, smile! If they’re going down, it’s time to roll up your sleeves. Either way, you’ll need to delve into the data further.

Likes

Data here is broken down in the long and short term as well as where they came from. You should be looking at how your page likes are reflecting growth. Look over the data to see which posts triggered spikes for a better understanding of what’s working (likes) and what’s not (unlikes).

Do not overlook where your likes happened! Was it from an ad or story? On your page? On mobile? From a page invite? Or even the suggested pages section? You might gain some strategic information on where likes are coming from and you’ll be able to potentially adapt your posts to optimize your conversion rates.

Reach

Use this page to answer the questions: How did my Facebook advertising dollars perform? How many Facebook users did I reach organically vs. paid? Use this information to tweak your budget.

Visits

Here again we focus on the where. Look at the External Referrers chart. This is your Facebook page’s equivalent of traffic sources on Google Analytics. Your website is probably going to be the number one referrer here and if it’s not, you should probably get yourself a like box on your website!

Posts

There is a lot in this section, including another 3 subsections. But there’s a great reason for it. Say you’ve seen a spike with an unlikely post. Here you can really explore the granular details of that individual post’s performance. Use this information to further target and speak to your fans, keeping your page relevant.

There’s also a chart that breaks down when your fans are online. By scheduling posts at times when your fan base is especially active, you’ll be able to further engage them.

Another fun tool here is the ‘Top Posts From Pages You Watch’ subsection. This gives you some small insights into how your competition is doing. You might want to apply some growth hacking here if you see they’re having better-than-average success. Look over their posts and review what’s working for them and if a similar approach would work for you. Launch an exciting promotion to bring your fans back, but whatever you do, don’t ignore this data.

People

The very last tab gives you the demographics about the fans you reached, the fans who liked your page and the fans who are actively engaged. Be proactive with this information and contextualize your marketing, adjusting your approach to maintain relevancy with them.

We’d love to hear more from you and how you’ve been using Facebook. Share your tips and tricks in the comments section below!

More Than A Numbers Game

For a more thorough breakdown of your stats, the platform also features the ability to export your data from the Twitter API as a CSV file. This is where all the number crunching starts to get a little more interesting.

Take things to a more detailed, micro level by re-organizing your engagement metrics or filtering out any data you don’t want to include in your spreadsheet. Don’t think user profile clicks are a good assessment of what you’re looking for? Get them out of there. Likewise, manipulate the data to pinpoint the days of the week – down to the time of day – you see the most interaction from your followers. Not sure what else you can do with all of this? Read on for some Twitspiritaion:

Keep An Eye On Who’s Keeping An Eye On You

Clicking on the Followers tab in the main dashboard reveals a graphic view of the number of your Twitter followers over time. It also includes a breakdown of your audience by interests, location, gender and even charts who they follow – an invaluable pool of information right at your fingertips if you know what to do with it.

Start by filtering out the tweets with the highest levels of engagement – as defined by you – in your spreadsheet and further sort by type of content, time of day (to figure out the best time to Tweet and which have worked best in terms of driving engagement). By now, you should start to notice some trends in the data. Do you see a handful of followers that consistently engage with your content? These are your influencers. Identifying who’s sharing the most and nurturing those relationships is a great first step to growing your online presence and driving traffic to your Twitter feed.

Streamline Your Content to Maximize Its Perceived Value

Now, you need to ask yourself – What’s your end goal? Growing your follower base? Increasing overall engagement? Are you looking to grow towards a definitive number (a static metric)? By a given rate over time (exponentially rising to some ceiling-less target)? Once you’ve worked this out, you can start putting a game plan into place.

Are your followers more likely to favourite rather than retweet your content? Favourites are a good indication that your Tweet resonated positively with your audience – sort of like a virtual high five. Retweets demonstrate perceived value – your followers not only liked what they saw, but wanted to share what was communicated. This is useful in driving up impressions and potential engagements.

Impressions are useful in determining the best times and days to tweet. Dividing your number of follows by total impressions gives you an indication of your Follow Rate. Want to track the impact of paid campaigns? Deduce your cost per follow by dividing your total spend by the number of new followers generated by its efforts.

Once you start to develop a deeper insight into what piques your followers’ interests, you can start analyzing and streamlining your content accordingly.

Key Takeaway

Twitter isn’t solely a traffic-generation tool for your business. Social networking serves as a public platform for your brand voice. It’s about connecting with the right people and engaging them in meaningful conversation – picking up a few brand ambassadors along the way is simply an added plus.

Do you use Twitter Analytics? Lets us know your favourite stats or strategies in the comments below.

It offers easily accessible insights on standard Twitter account metrics – clicks, shares, impressions, retweets – by promoted and organic activity, as one would expect. Beyond just the basic measurables for looking at realtime stats, however, and despite the fact that, at least for a while, this new and intuitive Tweet Dashboard seemed to have slipped past most people’s radar, its analytics offering is a powerful tool if you know how to use it.

In this post, we’ll cover the basics of what Twitter Analytics has to offer, including a breakdown of the metrics accessible and what they mean in terms of audience or follower engagement. Part II of this blog series will look at analyzing the data in greater depth for a more intuitive insight into its reporting potential.

First, Let’s Get You Set Up

Setting up your Tweet activity dashboard is incredibly easy – simply log into analytics.twitter.com with your account’s credentials and navigate to the top left panel to access metrics by Tweets, Followers or Twitter Cards performance.

Twitter Engagements: The Basics

Once inside the portal, you’ll see a breakdown of Tweet activity by Impressions (number of times your Tweet was viewed), Engagements and the Engagement Rate for each tweet and trend for those over time, to optimize. Engagements are measured by interaction and are tracked by the number of retweets, replies, follows, favourites and clicks anywhere on your Tweet (including hashtags, links, avatar, username and Tweet expansion).

How Are Your Tweets Resonating With Your Audience?

Clicking on ‘View Tweet details’ for a specific Tweet offers a granular view of the scale of engagement for that Tweet. How many times was it shared? What type of content receives the highest level of user interaction? How many actual follows were produced as a result?
Using this insight into engagement type and volume is invaluable when fine tuning your social marketing and content strategy, but it’s just skimming the surface of what the platform has to offer.

Stay tuned for part II of this series to learn more about audience segmentation, analyzing trends in overall engagement and more.

The Share Results team is back in Montreal after a whirlwind of a trip to Las Vegas for ASW15 last week. Nicole and Rebeca from the Share Results team attended the show to network, meet with clients and affiliates and bring home some important industry insights to share with the team. This year’s summit was held at the Paris Hotel and had the largest turnout to date with over 6000 attendees!

The team kicked off the conference at the Sunday Meet Market on January 18th (an absolutely must while attending the show) then attended a few informative seminars, meet with lots old and new contacts and squeezed in a few nightly networking parties (thanks Swagbucks and BankRate!)

This year’s keynote speakers were nothing short of inspirational. A heartwarming speech was given by Chad Hymas highlighting that anything is possible given the right perspective. While Noah Kagan won over the crowd by giving all attendees 10 dollars to buy the person sitting next to them a gift. The goal here was to highlight the important of making a personal connection while networking.

The conference as a whole was a great success. We were happy to be able to reconnect with partners, publishers, clients and colleagues. A big thank you to Shawn Collin and Missy Ward for another excellent Affiliate Summit!! We’re looking forward to getting in touch with everyone we met and working with you in 2015!Can’t wait to see you all again in New York for ASE15!

It feels like it was only yesterday that Share Results attended Affiliate Summit East in New York… Now we are getting ready to travel to Vegas and enjoy Affiliate Summit West 2015!

ASW 2015 is taking place January 18 to January 20, 2015 at Paris Las Vegas in Las Vegas, NV. This event unites affiliates, merchants, vendors, and networks together in one place for important educational sessions covering the latest trends and information in the industry.

If you arrive early, try to pick up your badge on Saturday. This will help you to save time on Sunday when Meet Market begins.

Review the educational sessions you would like to attend to and scheduled them in your calendar to be sure not to book any meetings during those times. Be prepared and rested; this conference will require all your energy, try to have all the information you would need with you and be clear on what you want to do and the conversations you want to have.

At the conference

Meet Market is the most anticipated day of the conference; you shouldn’t miss one minute of this event as it is the most attended and when many people schedule meetings for the upcoming days. Be sure to bring lots of business cards, stop by as many booths as possible, take notes and have your elevator pitch ready!

Everywhere, Whenever

The elevator, the taxi line, everywhere is a good place to make connections. Don’t be shy to ask people at the hotel premises if they are going to the conference and what do they do. Go to all events and talk to everyone!

Become a fast tag reader; many affiliates won’t have a booth but they will be walking around and looking for contacts. Keep your eyes open and look at badges for affiliates, they generally have a specific color.

After the conference

Following up with the connections you just met is key after Affiliate Summit. Send a quick follow-up email as soon as you get back to let your new contacts know that you’ll be reaching out with more information shortly. Many important contacts can be lost if you don’t reach out immediately post conference.

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With the holiday season already well under way, affiliates and merchants have likely begun planning their marketing campaigns, prepping their products and customizing their sites in an effort to take advantage of the year’s most profitable season. And while strategizing ways to maximize your marketing activities leading up to this timeframe is a great way to boost ROI, traffic and commissions, it’s important to realize that it’s not taking the whole picture into account. Understanding consumers’ behavior around this time is also key in terms of boosting performance.

Every year, countless numbers of Boxing Day aficionados fearlessly brave the Canadian winter, standing in queues for hours on end, dawdling through pushy crowds in the wee hours of the morning, all in hot pursuit of the greatest bargain. Traditional lineups aside, a growing number of Canadian shoppers have begun flocking to the internet from the comfort of their homes, as the store window becomes increasingly digital. Here’s some noteworthy trends to keep in mind this holiday season:

Boxing Day Sales Creep

If the past few years are any indication, Boxing Day’s most ardent deal hunters begin scouring the internet in search of the greatest finds well in advance. Many retailers have taken note, extending their dates for post-Christmas sales, with some even morphing Boxing Day into Boxing Week, to leverage the accompanying ‘sales creep’.

Takeaway: Start early. It’s no secret why some of the biggest retailers opened up their virtual doors touting boxing-day deals as early as Christmas Eve of last year.

Selfish Santas on the Rise

RetailMeNot.ca released an insightful report that touched on some seasonal shopping trends amongst Canadian consumers. They estimated as many as 8 out of 10 of those surveyed planned to treat themselves to gifts they wished they received this holiday season – about 49% of these shoppers were waiting for Boxing Day/Week, as they felt it offered the greatest deals; they also planned to spend an average of over $200 on themselves.

The Multi-Screen Approach

With millennials driving a significant portion of online sales, mobile shopping is steadily on the rise. While this isn’t particularly revealing in itself, interestingly, mobile didn’t necessarily replace in-store shopping, but rather, enhanced the purchase process. One study revealed that shoppers were found to shop across channels (smartphone to store), as well as devices (tablet to PC), starting to research a product on one device and completing the actual purchase on another.

Takeaway: Embrace mobile – this can’t be stressed enough. Encourage your site visitors to bookmark or in some way reserve the products they plan to buy. Minimize shopping cart abandonment by putting a multi-screen strategy in place to ensure you’re meeting the full expectations of potential customers throughout the complete purchase process.

Ratings & Reviews Are Big Influencers

It goes without saying that shoppers today are savvier than ever before. When they walk into a store or stumble across a website, they are mindful; well informed about what products to buy, how these compare across brands and which retailers offer the best deals on said product. This is especially true around the holiday season, when shoppers tend the most to rely heavily on consumer feedback to guide their purchase decisions. This is important, especially given that a majority of holiday shoppers aren’t particularly brand loyal; some don’t even have a specific product or brand in mind ahead of purchase.

Takeaway: Take advantage of the opportunity this spells out to keep your site visitors informed. Make it easier for potential customers to compare prices across multiple retailers – list products by price, brand, or some other comparable-across-the-board metric. Increase engagement by including a review or ratings section or a list of pros and cons for the best deals offered.

When the eggnog begins to wear off and you’re done recovering from the inevitable Xmas-induced haze of family gatherings, food comas and holiday cheer, what will you be doing to get your site ready for Boxing Day? Hit us up in the comments section below!

No doubt that you have planned ahead for the holidays, but now that they’re in full swing it’s time to take a moment to review that all your final touches are in order.

Have you been in the giving spirit?
You’ve done all your holiday decorating, but did you update your affiliates on what banners are available? Did you make it easy for them to promote your brand? Make sure you have replacement promotions available so they’re no caught with their holiday lights up year round!

Did you send your holiday cards?
The holidays are the perfect time to reach out to your affiliates and the clients they’ve referred. Take advantage to communicate holiday promotions and to build rapport. Send holiday greetings by mail and reach out via email regarding promotions. Be sincere and show your gratitude this year.

Final Shipping dates
On the subject of holiday cards – make sure you’re up to date on these crucial final shipping dates:

Is your out of office on?
Be sure that you take some time off to enjoy the holidays too! Before you do so, take a quick moment to turn on your out of offices automatic reply and update your voice mail message to reflect this. Feel free to comment with some good ones!

As December fast approaches, Mo-Bros around the globe are sharpening their razors to rid themselves of their furry upper lip. But guys, before chopping off your crumb catcher, lets all take a moment to ponder a few of the things Movember has taught us about Marketing.

1. Take Risks
Most startups can relate to with this One. Adam Garone, one of the mustachioed pioneers behind Movember, fought long and hard to build Movember into what is today. He nearly lost it all Movember 2006 but 4 years later, it was and remains the most successful fundraising campaign in the world.

2. Implement an Epic HashTag
#Movember is recognizable and short. It’s wide reaching and can be used again year after year. During this bristly month, it dominates social media proving that the power of a great hashtag cannot be denied.

3. Be Fun
When thinking about business, this one might be a little counter-intuitive, but it works. Movember reaches a huge demographic, with surprisingly half their website views from Mo Sistas. Their premise is all at once engaging, fun and memorable. They use humor across the board with their unique language, branding and celeb endorsement. The key here: they’re and consistent in their message and they delivery it in a quirky yet accessible way. They legitimized the mustache! How fun is that?

We’re working with Charlie’s Club, an excellent example of a start up whose implemented the above and have put their best mustaches forward this Movember!